


[Meta] On Writing Essays At Hogwarts

by cassie5squared



Series: Potter Meta: Thoughts on the Wizarding World [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassie5squared/pseuds/cassie5squared
Summary: Why it’s not as easy as it sounds to write a foot-long essay.





	[Meta] On Writing Essays At Hogwarts

I’ve seen this floating around for a while, and I had to agree at first. It really didn’t seem like a lot.

But then I got hold of some quills and ink, and I realised that there are some justifiable reasons for their complaints; even if the essays themselves are fairly short, actually writing them is hard work.

Quills aren’t the easiest things in the world to write with. They can be very finicky to handle, much harder than a fountain pen. You have to hold it in a way that won’t get ink all over your hands, and also at the right angle for it to actually let the ink flow instead of just making blank scratches. You have to wiggle it around sometimes to get the ink to flow again. You need to be able to write without making huge blots everywhere.

And even once you’ve got the knack of the quill, there’s the ink itself to deal with. You need to know how far to dip the pen into it, and remember to wipe off the excess on the rim of the inkwell in order not to get huge blots every time you put pen to parchment. And then, at best, you get a couple of sentences out of it before having to redip - at worst, if you’re really inexperienced, you get a couple of letters.

And on top of everything else, parchment comes in rolls. So you’re trying to do all of this finagling with the quill and the ink and trying to keep it legible on a surface that _keeps trying to roll itself up_.

No matter how bloody awesome and cool it’d be to be writing essays about magic, I think I’d be frustrated at having to deal with that. And I’m much more inclined to cut them some slack.

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